The Death of Guinevere.  Illustration by the Scottish painter Sir William Russell Flint.

In the most famous Arthurian romance, Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur (circa 1470), Queen Guinevere retires to a priory at Amesbury after Arthur’s death.  According to a sixteenth-century rendition of Malory’s tale, it was to White Ladies Priory, some twenty miles to the east of Shrewsbury, that Guinevere retires.  Here she died, and a local legend holds that she lies buried somewhere nearby.

It is said that White Ladies Priory was named after the white habits worn by the nuns who lived there.  However, at the time of the Norman Conquest (1066), White Ladies Priory is recorded to have housed a small foundation of Augustinian nuns, which actually wore black habits.   At this time the priory was called the White Lady’s Priory – in the singular – suggesting that it was originally named after a specific “White Lady”.

The ruins of White Ladies Priory stand in open countryside, a few yards down a dirt track.

Graham examines one of the graves inside the ruins of White Ladies Priory.

There is another tradition that the priory was named after a white marble statue of the Virgin Mary that was once house in the building.  It was said to be miraculous and glowed with a bright, golden light to warn of impending calamities.  It was claimed that it shone one night during evensong, at the time of the English Reformation, shortly before King Henry VIII ordered the priory to be shut down and its possessions seized in the late 1530s.  The Mother Superior was able to interpret the sign as danger ahead for the priory and hid the statue for safe keeping.  Its whereabouts remained unknown for centuries.

In the early summer of 2004 Graham Phillips and his friends form the USA, Graham and Jodi Russell, discovered that the statue still survived and was now in the St Mary’s Roman Catholic Church in the nearby village of Brewood.  It dates from the early Middle Ages and is remarkably well-preserved.  However, as far as the legend of the priory being named after the statue is concerned, it is made from grey, painted stone and not white marble as the legend recounts.  Another possibility for the priory’s strange name concerns Guinevere herself.  Interestingly, the name Guinevere comes from the Welsh name Gwenhwyfar, which derives from the old Celtic meaning “White Spirit”, a possible origin of the name “White Lady”.

The statue of the Virgin Mary that

once stood in White Ladies Priory.

White Ladies Priory is some twenty miles to the east of Shrewsbury.  Although the present ruin dates from the Middle Ages, it was constructed on the site of a much earlier building.  It is owned by English Heritage and is open to the public at all times, free of charge.